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Thursday, December 18, 2014

For months I have wished to support a friend I have known for over two
years

who may need to “come out of the autism closet,”

and who is also one of the kindest, bravest, strongest,
most selfless human being,

more than any neurotypical person I have known;

someone whose selflessness I could only compare to some
of my friends and allies at the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network or the Autism
Women’s Network.

This may be a shock for her, and if she is upset with me
for that, I understand.

Autistic people naturally feel low self-esteem and
self-loathing, not because there is something wrong with autism,

but because of years of discrimination and inequality.

If she is upset for me for breaking the news, I
understand.

It is a lot to ask of anyone, and something you should be
able to expect someone you trust not to hoist upon you.

Now when I say help her come out of the autism closet, let
me explain what I mean:

I do not mean that I plan to gain recognition for letting
her know she is diseased or needs to be fixed.

I do not mean that I wish to have her read books by
professionals who call her emotions or character flat or immature or treat her
like some person who can’t “get it together.”

I do not mean to treat her as if she or her chances of
getting where she was in life can be measured by some autistic who I consider
to be a basket case.

I do not mean that I need to treat her like someone whose
unique idiosyncrasies I need to constantly remind her of or patronize her for.

I do not mean treat her like she is a punching bag for me
as a person who is against things like vaccines, Monsanto, lead poisoning,
non-organic milk, abortion, or homosexuality.

I do not mean that she is someone I have to consistently
point out or blame for her past struggles with going to Burger King, keeping up
in school, following teacher’s instructions, or tolerating fluorescent lights.

I do not mean that I am going to strut around wearing
autism awareness on my sleeve, making her feel like some complete freak show or
charity case.

I mean to treat her like someone who has the same right
as any other person to have their individual needs to grow to her greatest
potential met without debating over whether it is due to being diseased or
treating her like I’m doing her a favor, no ifs, and, or buts, and no excuses,
hidden agendas, whatsoever.

I mean to treat her as a member of a group of people who
frequently don’t need to use small talk about weather or the price of gas to
avoid topics I am too uncomfortable to honestly talk about,

who don’t need someone with a grocery cart to make more
room between themselves and the sliding doors to get through when there’s ten
times as much room in the gap on the other side,

as someone who doesn’t need to hear or see something at
the next table and automatically assume it involves them,

who does not let themselves be judged by the presence or
the state of her things,

who have the courage and tenacity to follow their dreams
into fruition whatever the cost,

and probably included the cofounder of the Constitution,
the United States, and one of the best Universities in the world and the
smartest man who ever lived.

I mean to treat her as someone whose shortcomings are not
more severe rather than more tolerated.

If anyone wants to help a friend come out of the autism
closet, I suggest you follow my lead.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

This is a prayer I recite every morning after my meditation for the furthering of advancing equality and access for autistic people in our society. This prayer is for the advancement of cross-disability activism, inclusive education, inclusive societies, neurodiversity, the halting of the excesses of groups like Autism Speaks, and for the safety of all current and future autistic people in the hands of their caregivers and others.

May we never allow the short sight of people’s potential
to override the long future we are all bound to share together.

May we never allow our thoughts on the quality of one’s
future stop their future from coming to fruition.

May we not let groups paying large money to medical,
management, or corporate expenses move us to not pay it forward.

May we not allow the medicine we have been given me used
to call others diseased.

May we utilize our hearts with wisdom and striving,

recognizing all people under oppression and ableism as
potential allies.

May we take note of the discrepancies on our schools and
let the government know that we know.

May we allow all brains the full opportunity to make
their greatest contribution to society, notwithstanding our current medical
knowledge in any given age,

peacefully when we can, while protecting ourselves and
our loved ones from harm and danger.

I say this prayer to plant its wisdom firmly within me so
that it may spread around me and throughout our earth,

Sunday, November 9, 2014

This is a response to sorority Alpha Xi Delta over their support of Autism
Speaks.Currently, during the murders of
London McCabe by his mother, his father asks that all donations in respect to
him go to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network or the Dan Marino Foundation.I put this up in response wondering if AZD
truly cares about “the children” as they say they do.

Higher Priorities

How many Alpha Xi Delta chapter heads does it take to
screw in a light bulb?

None.

Because in their world, lightbulbs were never invented

because no one existed to invent them.

And yes, bring on the “fuck you’s,” and rolling your eyes

because in four years, your letters will go in a box,

but our lives will live on forever.

And you may become mothers of children, even autistic
children,

and then where will that have gotten you?
We are the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network,

Friday, November 7, 2014

It’s no news to me that autistic children have been
murdered by their parents, as have non-autistic children, and when they are,
they are frequently given lighter sentencing (because their child was
autistic), and shown great sympathy by the media, who praise their actions as “mercy
killings.”Karen McCarron, an Illinois
mother of a non-verbal autistic daughter, killed her daughter in 2006 and was
sentenced in 2008 with thirty-six years in prison, thirty months of supervised release after
her prison term and a $25,000 fine.The
media praised Karen, however, saying she was brave to kill her daughter because
she “might not have had a good life.”This
argument is used by mothers who get abortions, yet the politicians (particularly
Conservative Republicans) and the media, especially in the last few days with
the elections being held, demonize these women as murderers and
child-killers.But when a child that is
unequivocally a living thing is murdered, assuming they are autistic, the media
and law makers give them sub-standard sentences and sympathy.Recently, two autistic boys, not even ten
years old, were murdered by the people they should have been able to trust the
most: London McCabe, seven-years old, by his mother Jillian, and Jude Mirra,
eight, by his medical entrepreneur California mother Gigi Jordan.For this, Jordan was given twenty-five years
for manslaughter, while Jillian is held on $1 million bail until her court date
on November 12.Jillian has also been
justified by her supporter under the notion that he was mentally ill.

It
saddens me to see these boys lost.They
were younger than any people I have ever known or met to have died young,
including twenty-year old college students who I danced with at a school
formal.While the media

1.While the media praises “courage” of these
non-verbal autistic mothers, they show no respect for mothers of non-verbal
autistics who gave their children all they could to have the best possible life:Seriously, there are non-verbal autistic
whose mothers (and fathers) respected that they had great talents and gifts to
give, in spite of the fact that they would never meet conventional markers of
success, including Brooke, the daughter of autism mother and blogger Diary of a Mom, Emma Hope, and Amy Sequenzia.I know many of these mothers myself and they
are willing to sacrifice everything they have worked for so their child can live with the best possible life.Ignoring these mothers while praising Jillian
and Jordan is an insult, as if saying it is more courageous to murder your
autistic child than showing them love and support to lead whatever the best
possible life is for them.

2.McCabe and Jordan did not make the most human choices for their son, and there were
plenty of others out there: Even if they could not have handled the stress
of raising a non-verbal autistic child, there are others who could who would
have been happy to raise these boys.Autism organizations worldwide spoke out on the murder of London,
stating how before his death, many other parents were willing to adopt
him.The media honors these two mothers
for instantly jumping to the most violent and life-threatening solution.

3.The phrase “mental illness” does not
justify murder: When mentally ill people such as Elliot Rodgers and Adam
Lanza from the Santa Barbara and Sandy Hook shooting murder non-autistic and
older people, we do not tolerate that.Jillian McCabe and Gigi Jordan should be no different.

4.And for one fourth fact: How will Jillian
and Jordan’s life after their children’s death compare to the life their
children will now never know:Jordan’s
(and possibly Jillian’s) sentencing, though not near what I would have liked it
to be, will include over two decades of prison, with possible jail rape, abuse,
and physical and emotional torture.Not
to mention the fact that they are both now parents who have lost their own
children.I know many of these
parents.I have stayed up crying
countless nights for their own well-being, as well as my own.They and their children have gone to my
schools, my temples, my workplaces, everywhere.Many never recover and have later contemplated or tried suicide. That Jordan and Jillian thought the pain of
losing their child would be less than the pain of their children as they never
make it to traditional markers of success shows me how little they care about
them.And the fact that they were
willing to face the cruelties of prison life over living in a world with their
sons shows me they deserve them even more.These events have prompted such a passion for all autistic people in me that the day after I
heard about the first one, I wrote on Facebook with a link shared to the murder, “Let me just say to everyone now that if you ever abuse, neglect,
discriminate, intimidate, harass, or malign an autistic of any background, in
any capacity, for any reason or for any cause, I wish for no connection of any
type to you, whether they be professional, romantic, platonic, or even
electronic. Let me also say to anyone who has endorsed, promoted, or
manipulated the idea of "autism awareness" in any way: that the mere
phrase "autism awareness" is not a term for which I will instantly
consider you harmful, but if you are to be connected to that phrase in any way
possible, I consider the burden of proof to be on you that you and your efforts
have gone beyond the bare minimum to respect the concerns, issues, respect,
dignity, equality, feelings, and integrity of every single, solitary person who
is in any way, shape, or form a member of the autistic community.”

Saturday, November 1, 2014

For me, I felt like I didn’t get to do enough celebrating
yesterday at Halloween. I could have gone trick-or-treating, could have carved
a pumpkin, or toured my schools old Yeater hall and learn the legends of how
the third floor of what used to be the sorority house is haunted.But instead I got caught up in homework,
environmental work, and trying to start and autistics student and peer organization
at UCM.Don’t get me wrong.I enjoy these things, but because of them I
didn’t get to celebrate much Halloween.Luckily, November 1 of every year is Autistics Speaking Day.Autistics Speaking Day is a holiday started
by autistic activist Corina Becker and promoted by her friend Kathryn
Bjornstead in response to an event called Communication Shutdown, where people
are asked to go a day without social media, which to its creators is supposed
to show non-autistic people the sense of isolation they think we experience in
our daily lives.While Communication
Shutdown may have been started with the best intentions, it shows a real lack
of understanding of how many real autistics feel.In response to this projection by
non-autistic people, Autistics Speaking Day was created on November 1 through a
website started by Corina called autisticsspeakingday.blogspot.com. Each year it collects writings from autistic
people all around the world to tell their stories in their own words and grew
to over several thousands of contributors since it has started.Note: it is not connected to Autism Speaks or
any other major organization that is devoid of autistic representation or uses
analogies of autistics to car wrecks to raise money for genetic research into
autism without helping families bear the financial costs of paying for autism services
out of their pockets.Some contributors
do support AS, but they do not represent all autistics contributing.I wish I’d mentioned this sooner, but if you
are autistic, or an ally (which they'll ask you in the form), you can find the
submission form next year on their website at autisticsspeakingday.blogspot.com.Be sure to submit before November 1 of next
year.

This year I wrote a post for The Autist Dharma Ten Examples that Show
Violence Against Autistics is Alive and Well in American Culture, for which I
also submitted a link, my name, and the title to the Autistics Speaking Day
website submission form for 2014.Note:
this post contains graphic depictions of horrible acts committed by society to
autistic people, for which I mentioned on the submission form, as I was asked
if my post needed any content/trigger warnings.If you are triggered by acts of violence, including rape, torture, and
electroshock therapy, do not keep reading any further.f you are interested in reading it, and you know
you can handle it, you can find it on Autistics Speaking Day’s website at http://autisticsspeakingday.blogspot.com/2014/10/ten-examples-that-show-violence-against.html
with the rest of this year’s Autistic Speaking Day Posts.Or you can find it on my blog at http://autistdharma.blogspot.ca/2014/10/ten-examples-that-show-violence-against.html
with the rest of my posts (and there’s a link on ASDay’s website with a link to
my blog anyway, so…).So if you want,
sit back and enjoy the Halloween season.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

It
is said that if we don’t learn history, it tends to repeat itself.Wars such as the Crusade went on hundreds of
years ago, but today similar patterns of religious, political, and social
violence exist today.For the disabled
community, there is a history of horrendous violence.Forced sterilizations were done on women
thought “too unfit” to have children.People were looked up in institutions and shut off from the outside
world.While many parents and
professionals dealing with autism fear that there is not enough support for
autistic people to find the resources they need to live, they seem to show very
little care or interest about the safety
these children need to live. Today, many people claim there is greater
awareness about autism, there are deplorable patterns of violence committed,
condoned, and perpetuated by parents, schools, law enforcement, businesses, and
the media that the general public seems to neither know nor care about.It seems today that if you talk to the
average American on violence against autistic people, they seem to be either
unaware (or else have a distorted view) of at least (though certainly not
limited to) ten examples that show it still is very secure in its place in
American culture today.

Kelli Stapleton

Isabelle Stapleton is a severely
autistic teenage girl whose mother, Kelli Stapleton, tried to kill her by
lighting charcoal near the van she slept in.Issy miraculously survived and was taken away by her father, but her
mother was later interviewed on the Dr.
Phil Show to talk about her “compassionate killing” for her daughter, owing
to the fact that there were “not enough services” for Issy, and he and several
of Kelli’s supporters claimed (or at least implied) that she should have a
lighter sentence.Dr. Phil’s treatment
of Kelli may have been largely for ratings, but the fact that he was willing to
pull this huge publicity stunt by taking to such a heavy, controversial subject
shows that he has very little respect for autistic life.

Sounding the Alarm

Sounding the Alarm Battling the Autism Epidemic is a documentary film
released just this year by Autism Speaks co-founders Bob and Suzanne Wright.In the film Bob complains throughout the film
that autistic people “do not die” of autism despite the fact that both he and
Suzanne are the grandparents of an autistic son.The rest of the film is primarily complaints
by parents about the costs of programs such as Applied Behavior Analysis and of
how their children will not communicate, along with footage of Dan Sphlinx from
Anthrax complaining about how he has to go on duty to pay for his son’s
services with clips of him hugging his wife goodbye, and interviews from Autism
Speaks walks with subjects complaining about how there are very little public
funds for autism, despite the fact that many autistics find ABA dehumanizing,
that they try to communicate through non-verbal behavior, and that AutismSpeaks spends the largest portion of its money on genetic research for autismand executive salaries and accounting expenses.

The Autism Genome
Project

The Autism Genome Project is a
scientific partnership founded by Autism Speaks that seeks to raise money into
research of the various genes that cause autism.Over 60% of AS’s budget goes into this
project, several times more than services for autism or even corporate
salaries.Alarmed, several autistic
advocacy groups, such as the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and the Autism
Women’s Network, claim this research could help parents terminate autistic pregnancies as has happened to fetuses with Down syndrome.Moreover the AGP states that it needs brains
from autistic human beings for doing their genetic research.The statements recalls to me the early 1800’s
when Native American scalps were considered highly valuable.Despite the problems with AS’s impact, Autism
Speaks is sponsored by a number of well-known businesses and do-gooders such as
Home Depot, Joe’s Crab Shack, Macy’s and one of the oldest and largest women’s
college fraternities Alpha Xi Delta.

Avonte’s Law

Avonte’s Law was started in 2013
in New York City after autistic grade-schooler Avonte Oquendo went wandering
from his classroom and was found dead near a river.Despite the negligence of this school
environment, Autism Speaks, along with the New York City government thought
automatically that solution was to resort to police security of special needs
classrooms and passed this law that requiring security alarms outside the doorsof NYC special education classrooms to alert police forces, which have a
long-well documented history of abuse against autistics.

The Judge
Rotenberg Center

A residential, special education
facility in Massachusetts, the JRC has a long history of using electroshock
therapy on the skin of and withholding food from autistic and other disabled
students who refuse to do what its teachers tell them.Students have been shocked for flapping
hands, spinning, and refusing to take off their coats.Children have died in this institution, and
an FDA Panel hearing was organized to address the issue of torture at this
school, which is currently funded by tax-payer money.Autistic activist Lydia Brown wrote in an
open letter to the FDA Panel, “You cannot treat animals this way.You cannot even treat prisoners like this.”Meanwhile, the JRC was shown in
Autism Speaks’ 2013 walk to be partially funded by this organization.

Applied Behavior
Analysis

ABA, known for breaking down
everyday tasks into smaller steps, has been known for trying to suppress
autistic behavior by getting them to not flap their hands, spin, or do any
rocking whatsoever.A contributor to the
autism blog Unstrange Mind wrote in a
post about three weeks ago that he walked past a clinic where her saw a young
girl who had just gotten out of ABA therapy with her parents.Her mother said, “Look at me, Janie.”The girl refused to look at her, and Janie’s
father said, “Look at your mother, Janie.”Janie still did not budge.Eventually, her father held her by her arms and legs across her mother’s
knee while Jane trashed and screamed, and eventually looked at her mother.The author of this post wrote afterwards,
“What did Janie learn that day? …that adults can have whatever they want from
her, even if it hurts and even if they have to hurt her to get it. Janie
learned that her body does not belong to her and that she has to give others
access to it at any time, for any reason, even if she wasn’t doing anything
that could hurt herself or others. Janie learned that there is no point in
resisting and that it is her job to let others do what they want with her body,
no matter how uncomfortable it makes her.”

Police Abuse

It is well-documented that police
abuse has taken place towards autistics in a number of cases.Nicole Flatow wrote in the independent
editorial Think Progressin late June of 2013 that, “After a taxi driver spotted an autistic 11-year-old walking
naked on the highway early Saturday morning, Oregon State police used a taser
to apprehend her. Although police said the move was necessary to stop her from
danger, a witness at the scene, Adam Bednar, disputed this account, saying she
wasn’t walking toward the road.”In
2011, an eight-year old autistic boy in Denver was reported as having a
meltdown by Colorado state police.His
teachers told him to calm down, and when he continued to meltdown, state police
came in and handcuffed the boy, ordering that he be taken to a nearby mental
hospital for a psychological evaluation, the whole time being handcuffed as he
was driven to the hospital.

I
don’t get it.I went to a special needs
school and I saw meltdowns happen regularly.At no point in six years of attending did I see any instance of police
authority, let alone handcuffs.

The Washington Post on two autistic young
adults locked up in their basement

Last summer, two twenty-two year
old twin non-verbal autistic young men in Rockville, Maryland were found in
their basement with no furniture standing in their own feces.Police investigated the basement on unrelated
drug charges, upon which they found these two young men.Police apprehended the parents, John and
Janice Land, and they both appeared before a judge on trial.This incident was later covered in the Washington Post on August 6, 2014.The article spoke for only about two
sentences about the appalling treatment of the two boys and instead spent
nearly eight full paragraphs discussing police stories of working with autistic
children who’ve wandered off in different states, testimonies of parents
uninvolved in the situation talking about the lack of services for their
autistic children when they reach adulthood, and testimonies of people who know
the Land couple who expressed an “understanding” for why the Land’s acted the
way they did.The thinly-concealed tone
of the article stops short-barely-of condoning the abhorrent treatment of the Land couple.

Autistic Females

It’s well-known (or at least
most people think) that autism is four times more prevalent in males than in females.Yet current psychological
studies show that autism diagnostic standards mostly measure autism in males
instead of females.This fact was so
obvious that even Wikipedia was able to cite it.With so many horror stories
of autistics who wander unwittingly to pedophiles and rapists in the media, one
has to wonder why most psychologists consider the diagnoses aren’t considered
as important for females as males.Without the diagnosis, autistic girls and young women could miss the
services that allow them to learn non-verbal social skills and judge people’s
characters more correctly, making them one of the most endangered female
populations in society.

Everyday Life

I know too well, from six years
in my Kansas public elementary school, that bullying against autistic students
exists and is still alive today.I know
of autistics that have been threatened, harassed, and victimized in
schools.In sixth grade 2002, a
classmate said to me in the lunch-line, “I wish someone would fly a plane into
your house.”After teachers heard that
this kid had bullied me for several months, I know of nothing to this day that
was done about this violent remark, to which I told my parents.Only a few weeks later, a couple of this kids
friends, and maybe he himself, were reported as calling a sixth-grade girl “fat
and dumb.”For this I saw them send
right away to the principle by a lunch room attendant.We are like fish it seems, to immersed in
water to know we are wet. Most parents wouldn’t know that this young kid might
have been talked into autistic bullying by cultural mechanisms they don’t even
see exist, e.g., perhaps he had seen the way students in special education are
portrayed on television, and his elders did not even watching it, or notice
them on TV.Such talk only perpetuates
stigma and thus the violence that has been allowed to go on in everyday life.

Suddenly
it doesn’t look like there is much more awareness about autism today.The presence of autistics who die of (and are
injured from) police abuse, electroshock, murder from caregivers is still as
much here as it ever was.If you do
think there is more awareness, I want to ask, “will it save these
children?”More importantly, “will it
bring them back?”However much autism
seems to be a word or phrase in the household, autistic violence, torture, and
neglect are not.And is it possible,
perhaps, that maybe we should be focusing on other things than causes and cures
for autism?Society seems to push for
the resources autistics need some more but essentially neither know nor care
about the protection.If I could contact
these lost children and ask them about the work of autism’s most trusted
champions, would they thank them for this?

Friday, October 17, 2014

This semester I have been taking an Anthropology of Food
class as part of my degree in Cultural Studies.For this class, we have been asked to keep weekly food journals that
describe experiences related to food, and how they are relevant to what we are learning
in class. This week I have learned many important
things about food to me, both as an autistic activist and a Buddhist.After doing my last two food journals, which
talk about the things I learned, I learned the importance of one autistic
woman, and how the world would be if autistic people weren’t here.These two pieces below are my food journal
entries, which show what these lessons are, and what together, what I learned
from writing them.

The Value of Humanely Treated Animals

When
we were talking in class the other day, something a student said rang a
bell.We were discussing how cobras in
Thailand, fed in many restaurants, were agitated more they were slaughtered, in
order to get their blood increasing, in order to add a certain value to the
meat for its consumers.That makes me
think back to a story in the meat processing industry that sort of relates to
this story.I learned years ago that a
woman named Temple Grandin, an autistic activist and professor on animal
studies, once helped change the humaneness of animal treatment in
slaughterhouses.I don’t know what she
did (I think it was allowing the cows to be less cooped up in small spaces),
but she said that the animals were stressed from the aspect to the
slaughterhouses she helped change.I
realized when we were discussing cobras how cows may produce more blood when
they are agitated.Back when I was a
kid, I used to hear a lot of scared talk over Mad Cow Disease, which can happen
due to ingesting blood from sick cows.Cows perhaps can become sick due to just as humans can.Being cooped up in small spaces is also more
likely to cause disease, just as stress here in the dorms at UCM we are often
prone to the flu.Auschwitz and other
Nazi German concentration camps were infamous for disease, which weakened
people’s ability to work until soon they would be sent to the gas
chambers.Being cooped up in small
spaces when it is not necessary clearly seems like it is an awful way to live,
and perhaps for that reason it is good that we now have free-range meats
available.

To Eat Steak or Not to Eat Steak

For
many years, I have sometimes doubted my decision to eat meat.I am a convert to Buddhism and many Buddhists
are vegetarians, believing that vegetarianism best follows the Buddhist
teachings of respect for all life.The
problem is my many ‘taste issues,’ that would make doing so a real
challenge.I could eat free-range meat,
but even meat being free-range is not always what it seems, and still
contributes to the deaths of animals.For that reason, many Buddhists and followers of other faiths choose not
to eat meat.

However,
I think, if one wanted to stop contributing to the destruction of life, there
are other things one could look at.Currently, machines that help plow fields use large amounts of energy
that contribute to the destructions of animal’s homes.Slash-and-burn, a technique used in many
countries to raise farm land, also helps contribute the destruction of
habitats.Raising farm land also causes
trees to be cut down, thus further endangering animal’s habitats, in addition
to taking life.Rice farms in Ghana, a
great exporter of rice, have workers living in inhumane, life-threating
conditions, much like China’s Apple factories, where many workers commit
suicide.Rice farmer’s children in
Ghana, not having enough to live on, wander off into the cities to make a
living, where crime is rampant and they often don’t have places to live.In Southeast Asia, where great rice producers
are located, indigenous people are often forced off their land to raise fields
for rice for outsiders who threaten the native flora and fauna.These in turn, such as in Burma, cause armed
conflict with indigenous militias and government armies, whose families also
depend on them for support.That being
said, it seems that a “vegetarian” life-style could lead to the endangerment of
children and armed conflict in the Third World, and destruction of wildlife and
deforestation in the Third World and elsewhere.As I understand it, the Buddhist precept “Do not hurt the life of any
living beings” does not apply in cases where it is necessary, such as where
your life or the life of your loved ones is threatened.Rather than seeing all this death and
destruction, I think slaughtering cows would be more human.Obviously we need grains in our diet, and we
must treat animals more humanely.Farmers in the Third World could be treated more humanely too, but a
diet based more on grains could possibly lead to all this devastation at home
in the Third World that has yet to be taken care of.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

-to never victimize, abuse, discriminate, or defame a person for having autism.

-to see the entire person when looking at an autistic person, rather than merely their disability.

-to be cautious of the picture today’s media paints of autistic individuals, knowing that they are often exaggerated or only half-true.

-to do thorough research on autism organizations before investing, donating, or working for them, such as learning how much of their money raised actually goes to autism services, how much autistic people are represented among them, and how they represent people with autism and help others do the same.

-to be aware of what autistic people may experience from other people due to their disability.

-to respect both the challenges and strengths that autistic people have on account of their disability and learn to see themselves from their own eyes.

-to honestly strive to never help an autistic person in a way that takes away their dignity.

-to help any person with I know or suspect might be autistic when I see them struggling with a situation with my own discretion.

-to recognize that if a person with autism is involved in an interpersonal or social crisis or accused of something that seems unlikely to remember that they often might have trouble presenting their side of the story and to help them if I can to bring it to the people in charge of dealing with these situations.

-that when I read anything or view anything mentioning autistic people, to pay attention to the tone that the author or maker on autistic people.

-to speak the honest, entire truth to the best of my knowledge whenever I talk about autism.

-to not turn a blind eye when I see an autistic person in a crisis involving other people due to misunderstanding on account of their disability and bring the issue to the attention of someone who would be an appropriate and likely candidate to help them.

-to not deliberately misrepresent an autistic person’s voice on their disability for my own or someone else’s reasons, whether they be selfish reasons or otherwise.

-to reevaluate any mistaken first impression I may have of an autistic person due to behavior of theirs as a result of their disability.

-to find a way stand up for myself when and if I am pressured by other people into doing something reprehensible to an autistic person on account of their disability.

-to be aware of the feelings of autistic people when responding to or talking about their disability and anything related to that.

-to value the opinions of autistic people on matters about themselves.

-to judge the ideas, actions, and other effects of autistic people by their inherent qualities, not the person’s disability.

-to show empathy and support for autistic people I encounter who are going through pain on account of things related to their disability.

-to talk about autistic individuals as with respect to their diversity, avoiding terms such as “suffers from autism,” or using broad generalizations or mentioning an autistic person’s disability when not relevant to the discussion.I pledge to recognize that people with autism, like everyone else, seek food, water, physical support, free self-exploration, and love.

Please put your name in the comment section if you agree with these principles.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

When
many people hear “lower-functioning” autistic or “severely autistic” they think
of someone who is not right in the head, like someone who is mentally insane
with no control over their selves.They think
that they are simply out of touch with reality.They believe they are not intelligent beings.They see them and see someone flapping their
arms or spinning in circles.They
recognize that they are people who cannot speak or take care of themselves, or
if they speak through facilitated speech, they don’t consider that a valid form
of communication.However, it is not
necessarily that way.Many deaf people
cannot speak and use sign language, expressing their thoughts, feelings and
information in a different way just as people using facilitated speech do.Many non-autistic people with other
disabilities cannot take care of themselves, such as the Nobel Prize-winning
author and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.Yet many non-autistic people assume “severely” autistic people to be out
of touch with reality because they have repetitive behaviors such as
hand-flapping or rocking that our society just doesn’t tolerate.They think “they don’t think like we do.”Yet simply because they don’t speak like you do
doesn’t mean they don’t feel like you do.When someone hurts them, they feel pain.When someone loves them they feel joy.Just because they do not like to be hugged does not mean they do not
wish to be loved by their mother, or brother, or father, or anyone else.It may be that their senses work differently as
so many autistic people’s do to.Autistic people, according to autism expert Lisa Jo Rudy, do stimming
behaviors, such as flapping arms, because it helps relieve stress and anxiety,
just as biting one’s nails tends to do.The only difference is that biting one’s nails is much more
acceptable.Some stimming can be
addressed by helping relieve autistics anxiety, such as through
medication.Several intelligent
accomplished people with lower-functioning autism include Amanda Baggs, SueRubin, Birger Sellin, and Amy Sequenzia, who all communicate through
facilitated speech.Yet when many
neurotypicals hear this said, they think of some lower-functioning autistics
who have no type-speech ability, whether real or presumed.Therefore they tend to think of them as
unintelligent, but that is not automatically the case.These autistics have never had the chance to
communicate what they know or can do in their minds because they do not have
the communications skills to do so.According to psychiatrist Dr. Laurent Mottron, that IQ tests deem many
non-verbal autistics unintelligent due to lack of speech.He says, “A blind person has a disability and
needs accommodation, but you wouldn’t give a blind person a test based on
vision.”Other’s may point out that for
some lower-functioning autistics, they can’t understand what other people are
saying, or can’t respond.But I know as
an autistic that I and many other autistic people tend to think about things
more visually and don’t respond so much to the word.One of the hallmarks of autism is lack of
recognition of abstract concepts.For a
lot of us, I know, when we see something like “keys,” we don’t think so much
about “keys,” but that particular set of keys, so often times we have trouble
understanding this visually.When I
think of the keys to my dorm, I think “my keys.”When I think of the keys to get inside my
house, I think “the keys to my house.”When I think of the keys to my mom’s car, I think “Mom’s car keys.”I do this to help me identify concrete things
because that is how I think, yet it doesn’t mean I or any other autistics are
less intelligent than you or any other intelligent people you may know.To learn more about how severely autistics
learn, you might check out Ellen Notbahm’s Ten
Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

This article from The
Washington Post “Coping with Adult Children’s Autism, Parents May Face ‘the
Least Bad Decision’” by Dan Morse was written almost two weeks ago, but upon
reading it, I could not help but find it unnerving.This sort of thing is happening today.It’s happening everywhere with bystanders who
neither know nor care that it is happening.In this particular instance, where two young autistic twin males where
confined to a room in their house by their parents, the police just happened to
search the room on unrelated drug charges and found the twins.The two young men were both non-verbal, and
had trouble with several independent living skills, such as toilet training.

To be honest, I am accustomed to
news media’s rhetoric on autism where parents and caregivers who abuse autistic
children are given sympathy, yet for me, this article still prompts me to
respond and speak up.The article in
question was a follow-up to a previous article from The Washington Post “Rockville, Md., Couple Charged with Abusing
Twin 22-Year Old Autistic Sons,” which you can read at the link below to get
the story:

This
article talks about a couple in Rockville, Maryland who were found to have
locked their twenty-two year old autistic twin males in their basement with now
furniture.The room was full of urine as
the young men had been using it as a bathroom.Fortunately, the couple in question, John and Janice Land, where
arrested on July 17 and charged with two counts of vulnerable adult abuse and
two counts of false imprisonment, and was reported by The Washington Post on July 21, 2014.

This article did not cause me
such frustration, but the proceeding article, written on August 6, 2014, caused
me much more anxiety.You can find it
below here to at:

In
the interest of fairness, I can say that The
Washington Post stayed just behind the line of outright condoning of the
treatment the twins suffered.It did,
however, go to great lengths it seems to dissect certain pieces of the story,
combined with local commentary of people in the Land’s community and autistic
parents with facts on autistic adults to give a “read-between-the-lines”
justification of the Land’s actions.In
the first few paragraphs of the article, Dan Morse quotes a father of an
autistic son Mark Buckman, saying, “…it’s possible that, in [the Land’s]minds,
they thought this was the least bad way to deal with this.”Afterwards, rather than talking about what the
twins experienced, Morse, spends nearly five whole paragraphs talking about
Mark Buckman’s son 18-year old John, and the struggles he has in his daily
life, such as the tendency to wander off, and wearing a tracking device to
prevent such occurrence, followed by numbers and figures on the prevalence of
autistic adults and how families struggle with the lack of services for them,
including a quote by an Autism Speaks executive, Lisa Goering, stating that
there are not enough services for all the autistic adults who need them.Goering’s quote, however, seem rather out of
place as the organization for which Goering is an executive of has, in the past
year, spent only 3% of its budget of over $60million on services that can help
autistic people live independently, with the bulk of their budget being spent
on genetic research for autism, and its top executives, such as Goering.

The
rest of the article deals almost exclusively with the tendency of some autistic
people to wander off, the lack of services for adults once they are out of high
school, and sentiments from parents of autistic children.One woman from Montgomery, Kathy Page, mother
of two sons, 24- and 22-years old, is interviewed and quoted as speculating
that the Land’s keeping their children in a dark room, one littered with feces,
was their way of preventing overstimulation commonly faced by autistic people
from happening to their sons, followed by saying that she can understand the
frustrations experienced by the Lands.Though Morse doesn’t condone the Land’s behavior directly, he seems to
imply that the lack of services available in the future for the Land’s twins
combined with their independent living struggles (for which Morse does not
indicate wandering off), justifies confining their sons in their basement.The article ends with a heart-wrenching quote
from the 18-year old John’s father Mark Buckman saying, “All we want is for our
son to be happy.”To me, there is no
possible explanation for much of the article’s content, other than to perhaps
justify or excuse the Land’s behavior.For the fact is every one of the parents Morse interviews in his article
are one’s struggling with independence skills.He does not interview parents such as the parents of 17-year old autistic
young man, Montel Medley, who The
Washington Post itself reported less than two months prior to the current
article as graduating high school with a 4.0 GPA before going off to TowsonUniversity.Nor does Morse mention Dilan
Barhmache, a non-verbal teen who gave his high school graduation speech.As for the people Land’s interviews about the
Land’s actions, there is no one quoted in the article as saying that they were
wrong to keep their sons locked up.No
one saying that autistic people deserve the same rights as everyone else.Only implicit sympathy and rationalizing.Perhaps The
Washington Post is looking out in the interest of ratings, but in any case,
the article focuses almost exclusively on autistic people who wander off
combined with the valid laments of parents whose children lack services, and
explanation for the Land’s behavior.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Robin Williams. 1951-2014 Comedian, actor. Star of Jumanji, Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire, RV. He starred at a time when other people with learning disabilities grappled restlessly to keep up in the public school systems throughout the U.S. and elsewhere. For many we will remember the shows for our troops overseas, and shall stand out as a good role model to all. He stands out with Keanu Reeves, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, and Henry Winkler as people who excelled in the entertainment industry with a learning disability. For all of us, disabled and not, let us all remember what every single individual is capable of achieving when given the right tools and resources. When we see others who are discriminated against or abused, let's take note and take action. Many do not fit into our tiny boxs that can only accommodate so many people, but they are built to give us so much and to receive as well. Let us remember that the more we give to communities and individuals, the more we are likely to gain in return.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

With chelation, cannabis, sauna
treatments, and bleach being widely believed by ordinary people to be
legitimate treatments for people with autism, this article I read came of being
particular disgust to me.Recently, the
New York Times did an editorial called Kids
Who Beat Autism, describing as its name suggests, that certain kids who
were, at least, autistic now no longer have autism, by Ruth Padawer, which you
can read here for a balanced perspective on my rebuttal:

As I finished this article, I
find myself fairly unimpressed with its findings and studies.To be fair Padawer stops just short of
condoning the idea of eliminating autism.She admits that certain marketed treatments out there, such as vitamin
shots, special diets, and nutritional supplements, are dangerous, yet the
rhetoric of this article appears to be that autism is a prison for children, to
say nothing of what it is for parents, making them unable to have real
relationships, and be a perpetual hostage of their own world, but that they
have found a way through safe treatment (e.g. Applied Behavior Analysis) that
delivers them from this cage and makes them non-autistic, and thus now able to
lead happy, meaningful lives.Throughout
the article, Padawer consistently draws from studies which demonstrate greater
social progress for children who received more hours of A.B.A than less, such
as full, or at least greater language ability.What Padawer does not mention is autistics who are non-verbal and who
also lead productive and socially successful lives, such as Amanda Baggs, Amy Sequinza, and Sue Rubin.For the first
eight paragraphs in Padawer’s rather long article, she mostly discusses a young
child named B.Her article begins with
saying B. was a perfectly developmentally typical child until he was around
two, when he retreated into his own world, stopped using eye contact, had tantrums,
and frequently banged his head.About
nine paragraphs into her article, Padawer also talks about another child,
Matthew, who at the time at least had autism, and states quite clearly that
Matthew was not interested in other children, and who also had limited
communication.Seven and eight
paragraphs into her article, she points out that through years of A.B.A, B.,
gained language skills, talked frequently, and abandoned his need to
perseverate about his special interests in dinosaurs and fish, and eventually
his doctor claimed that B. no longer had autism.

Now to me, this seems like an
incredibly oversimplified idea of what autism is.I can carry on a conversation, make eye
contact, read social and emotional cues, have discussions with peers that are
interesting to both of us, yet my parents and family would raise an eyebrow if
they heard a professional say I wasn't autistic.I still exhibit fixated interests, have
trouble sleeping (mostly during highly stressful periods), can be averse to
certain food textures, even though that is gradually changing. Two paragraphs after Padawer states B. was
diagnosed as being no longer autistic, Padawer states that autism is based on
certain diagnostic criteria, which children can grow out of and are thus no
longer autistic, even if they do display some autistic traits.But maybe a fair question is, “Who decides
the diagnostic criteria for people with autism?”The criterion has changed over decades.The criteria by which I was diagnosed as a
young child is now very different from what it is now that I am twenty-four.In
any case Padawer and certain psychologists may say I or other children outgrew
what defines autism.Yet from what I see
many diagnostic traits, such as the lack of interest in other people are merely
impressions of psychologists.Autistics
do have interests in other people, yet don't always know how to express it,
many of whom don't have the language skills to do so in the ways that come
naturally to verbal neurotypicals, or the lack of innate ability to read
non-verbal social cues, so I am not impressed by the findings that children's
"interests" in people increase with language skills, and the ability
to read social cues through intense training.The article made no mention of the frequent overstimulation autistic
people experience when it mentioned head-banging and tantrums.Autistic people learn certain things
differently just as children with dyslexia and AD/HD do.In Padawer article, she makes no mention of
historical people believed to have autism, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albert
Einstein, Harry Truman, or Abraham Lincoln.In the words of 2011 autistic Miss Montana winner, Alexus Wineman, “Autism
doesn’t define me.”

Padawer mentions nothing as to
whether the brains of autistic children change after their treatment.She simply mentions that no one knows about
what differences there are in the autistic brain.I would also point out that there is
knowledge on the differences between autistic and non-autistic brains, Time
magazine did an article in 2006 on autism, which showed many ways in which
certain parts of the brains of autistic people are different than in
non-autistic people.You could probably
find it if you googled "Time magazine autism 2006."Padawer merely quotes, vaguely, that
psychologist Geraldine Dawson’s believe that the autistic brain could
change.Padawer makes no mention of
Dawson’s tenure as a board member of the group Autism Speaks, which then held
to the belief that vaccines cause autism.The fact that Dawson was paid over half a million dollars for her role
as an executive should automatically remove her from a list of non-biased
sources.Padawer also makes no reference
to the fact that A.B.A is not an appropriate treatment for autistic
people.My father, a PhD psychologist in
Overland Park, Kansas, claims that A.B.A would have been a horrible treatment
for me and that the right school was the right path for people like
myself.Padawer does not lie, to be
perfectly honest, but her facts lack the insights and complete picture that can
only be gained with other equally important stories of several individuals with
autism.For me it is necessary to refute
this article because people are ensnared and led to dangerous decisions by
ideas like Padawer’s.These children's
autism is clearly not cured, and promising this illusion simply creates shame
for parents who fail to "cure" their children, rather than
redirecting their energy to advocate for services for their kids and let them
make it through life.The so-called
findings in this article seem to merely be a by-product on our culture's useless
war on autism. I would not say my life
is worse than for people who haven't been cured.I am a college student, an artist, a writer,
a flautist, and a friend to autistics, neurotypicals, dyslexics, Downs people,
and a part-time retailer.For me, being
able to tell people I am autistic allows them have sympathy for my unique
behavioral traits and it entitles me to test-taking services at my university. From the material I read I find this article
shows the typical culturally idiosyncrasy of the idea that autistic children
are science experiments, and ignorance of us as first-class citizens.